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Chertoff Delayed Katrina Response

Michael Brown stepped down as the director of FEMA Monday, but a new report from Knight Ridder walks responsibility for the Katrina debacle a little bit higher up the chain of command. While Brown has taken much of the blame for the federal government’s slow response in New Orleans, Knight Ridder says that Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff failed to give Brown the authority he needed to mobilize a massive federal response to Katrina until 36 hours after the storm struck land.
Who had the authority in the meantime? Michael Chertoff.

Chertoff had the authority and responsibility to declare Katrina an *incident of national significance.*
An updated timeline from Think Progress has a request from the Louisiana National Guard on Sunday, the 28th for 700 buses.
On Monday, Chertoff was still discussing immigration with Bush.
While Gov. Blanco was requesting assistance to evacuate the Superdome, Chertoff was putting together a task force.

3 thoughts on “Chertoff Delayed Katrina Response”

Yes, Chertoff has got to go. I’m not at all surprised to learn that he’s the one who diddled around. After the London subway bombing, he was nice enough to inform NYC that subway security was low priority and he couldn’t be bothered to worry about ours. Last year, NJ had very serious flooding — no response from FEMA, and, so far as i know, they’ve still never gotten any financial aid. I can’t help wondering if the truly dark secret for ignoring New Orleans, NJ, and NY isn’t because these are Democratic areas. Those damned Democrats can just go ahead and die, I guess.